


Seventeen and Not a Day More

by allyarra



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-16 23:24:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1365550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyarra/pseuds/allyarra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allison is 17 years old. She will never be a day older. And then she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seventeen and Not a Day More

Allison is 17 years old. She will never be a day older. Chris has never felt pain like this. He wonders how any parent continues to live after they have lost their child. It is not like the occasional sharp pain that comes when he thinks of his little sister with the golden hair. It is not like the constant ache that is present whether or not he thinks of his wife with hair of fire. He is gutted, ripped to shreds, and left a hollow shell of a man without his daughter with the hair as dark as the shadow she has become.

Scott stands next to Chris and Isaac stands on his other side. Derek is behind them, a silent support. Stiles stands off to the side, separate and yet a part of them. Lydia is in his arms, the only color on her is her bright red hair, standing out like a beacon. Chris cannot cry, the tears won’t come but Lydia cries for the both of them.

Today they are burying his daughter. His beautiful, strong, amazing daughter. His baby girl who would smile up at him from the crib, dimples flashing and giggle when he danced with her.

Allison is 17 years old. She likes archery and Lady Gaga. Her first boyfriend was Scott McCall, a good boy who stayed her friend. Her best friend is Lydia Martin. Allison is 17 years old. She wants to go to prom. She is failing econ. Allison is 17 years old.

Compartmentalization works only so long as you have something else to focus on. His father taught Chris from a very young age to focus on what was important. There is nothing more important than this.

Today they are burying his daughter. It is a nice day, warmer than it has been for weeks. It is exactly the kind of day Allison likes best, when she could wear one of her dresses and pair it with a jacket. She loves those outfits, loves the utility of the jacket. Chris can remember the first time she’d discovered that her clothes could be both pretty and useful. Her mother had bought her a yellow dress with a skirt that billowed when she twirled and she’d laughed and laughed as she’d spun around the living room.

The priest drones on and on and Lydia clutches him, as if she cannot stand without the support. Chris focuses on the girl in his arms, so much tinier than his daughter and yet with the same ferocity of spirit. He needs a focus right now.

Lydia’s parents are not at the funeral. It is a small ceremony, with only close friends and family, but Lydia’s parents do not come. Their daughter’s best friend is dead and they are nowhere to be found. Chris holds her close, letting her cry the tears that do not come to his eyes. She is still young and easily wounded by the world and he wonders how her parents can just leave her alone.

His daughter is gone, gone, gone and he’s left with the shattered remnants of her life and he wonders how any parent can just leave their child alone. It is that thought that gives him focus, allows him to put steel back into his spine. He is surrounded by children who have been shattered, who have been left without their protectors.

As they lower the wooden box holding his daughter’s body into the cold earth next to her mother, the place that should have been his, he focuses. He has trained all his life to hunt, to hunt that which threatens humanity. Chris is tired of chasing any shadow that happens to catch his attention. The world is too big, too empty. His girls are gone, all of them. His sister, his wife, and then his daughter.

One year since he returned to Beacon Hills and he has lost every person he loves. Kate left him with Victoria and Allison. Victoria with Allison. Allison has left the most behind. She has given him her pack, the children struggling to stay together and to stay strong and to survive. Allison had the briefest amount of time to live and yet she left the biggest impact, shining so brightly that in the absence of her light everything is just a little bit darker, a little bit duller.

The only things that still shine with her light are the pack that she has left behind. Allison is 17 years old and will never be a day older but she has left him a code. She has left a legacy for her father to follow.

He will protect those who cannot protect themselves. And he will start with the pack left with an open, weeping wound in the wake of her loss.

 

 

 

Curfew has a different meaning now. Two weeks since Allison has been put in the ground (and somehow Chris measures time from the funeral, not since the day she died) is the day that Derek calls him, choking on his own blood.

Chris doesn’t bother waking Isaac, just grabs his bag, the emergency bag that he’s kept ready for two weeks, and runs, shouting over his shoulder. The loft is empty when he gets there and he edges in, gun at the ready.

“They’re gone,” Derek chokes out, struggling to even breathe. “They’re gone,” he repeats and his eyes are unfocused, pupils dilated all the way.

Chris swears in a way he never allowed himself to do when Allison was here. Derek is weeping black blood from the hole in his chest and more of it is trickling out of the corner of his mouth.

It is luck that saves Derek that night. Pure, dumb luck. The bullet was lodged in him and Chris recognized the wolfsbane used. It’s the same kind that had once been found in his own bullets. He still carries them with him but now he uses one to heal and the rest are put away, meant for protection rather than predation.

“Kate,” Derek gasps out when he is lucid, his wound no longer weeping.

“What?” Chris demands. “Derek,” he snaps, an order in just one name.

“It was Kate. She’s alive.”

His eyes roll up in his head and Chris doesn’t get anything else from him. He takes Derek home with him, supporting him into the guest bedroom next to the one Isaac sleeps in. Isaac watches with wide eyes from the kitchen but he doesn’t say anything.

That’s the night that Chris institutes a curfew. It doesn’t mean what it used to, back when it meant keeping his daughter safely at home. Now it means that after it gets dark the pack reports their location and status to him every hour until they are safely at home for the night. If they leave they report in again.

Curfew lasts until the sun goes up again. Some nights Chris wonders if it really will rise again, if the world wasn’t meant to be covered in shadow without Allison there to light the way.

  
  
  


A week after Derek began sleeping in his guest room and three weeks after Allison went into the ground Chris sees his sister again.

Kate is beautiful. She was always beautiful. A golden haired angel, always the prized child, the prodigy. Chris had seen her as both daughter and sister, helping to raise her and trying to fill in for all their father’s failings. He blames himself for the monster that she is.

“They killed her,” Kate rages as she stands over Allison’s grave. “They killed my perfect girl.”

Chris wonders if she is mourning. He can see the dark in her now, the dark that was reflected in Allison’s appearance in the same way that Allison’s light was reflected in Kate. They are mirror images and he doesn’t understand how he managed to bring such a wonderful girl into the world even for just a short while.

“Her killers are gone,” he tells the monster wearing the body of his little sister. “They’ve been gone for weeks.”

Chris is good at compartmentalizing. He just needs to focus. Right now he is focusing on the lost children he needs to protect from his own flesh and blood.

“No, they’re not,” Kate screams at him and then her face is changing, her eyes a sickly green.

The only thing that saves Chris from having his throat ripped out is Scott’s timing. The boy has thrown himself at Kate, tackling her to the ground.

Chris should be angry. He’d ordered the pack to stay in the woods, to stay safe. He’d wanted to confront his sister alone. Scott has saved his life, he can’t say anything.

  
  
  


Lydia spends a lot of time in Chris’s apartment. She likes to do her homework in Allison’s room, spraying the perfume Allison’s mother bought her whenever the scent starts to fade. Some nights she sleeps in there and he wonders if it’s healthy for her to cling to Allison’s memory this way. He doesn’t say anything out loud.

Chris is not meant to be her friend. He is a rock solid presence in her life. He is the support that she has never had.

Chris is not meant to be her friend. That is for the pack, for the new girls at school.

Chris is not meant to be her friend. Instead he can be the one who supports her in everything she wants to do, the one person who will always be in her corner.

Lydia spends a lot of time in Chris’s apartment. Neither of them is a replacement for what the other does not have, but it is something. It is better than nothing. Allison would like it this way.

  
  
  


A month after Allison has been put into the ground she walks back into his life. She is perfect in every way. His baby girl, returned to him.

He cries then, for the first time in front of another person. Tears come as he cradles his daughter close to him, feels her breath against his neck the same way he did when he cradled her as a baby. The pack crowds close, unable to believe it.

Allison smiles wide, eyes sparkling and dimples winking. The gaping hole that has been inside Chris that has been slowly filled by the pack is suddenly full again.

Allison laughs and she is perfect in every way.

  
  
  


They find the first body the next morning. It is gruesome and he understands why the Sheriff doesn’t let the children look at it, despite everything that has happened. Allison looks up with wide trusting eyes and impossibly she is a day older. Chris lets out a breath and takes her to the basement. The pack follows them, loathe to let her out of their sights. Chris smiles and lets them follow. He understands their fear that she will disappear. Allison is 17 years old and she is a day older than she should ever have been.

  
  
  


Three days and two more bodies after Allison has returned Chris grabs Isaac and drags him out to the forest. It is a routine they’d settled into during that bleak month and they have not gone in three days.

“You don’t have to do this,” Isaac tells him and Chris wonders how on earth Isaac’s father could ever lift a hand to him. It fills him with rage to think of what Isaac has gone through, to think of what one parent did to their own child while Chris lost the daughter he’d loved and cared for. He has her back now but that doesn’t change anything.

“I don’t have to do anything,” Chris tells Isaac. “I want to. Just because you’ve had a little vacation for the past few days doesn’t mean I’m going easy on you. Five seconds, go,” he orders and he’s never seen a grin so bright as Isaac runs into the forest.

Five seconds later Chris is following him in, tracking in. When he catches Isaac he will teach the boy to defend himself against predators. It was Chris taught his daughter and even if it failed her once he is still determined to teach Isaac. He will not fail Isaac the way that he failed Allison.

  
  
  


Chris watches Allison sleep. She sleeps sprawled out in the bed, moving every now and then so there is no way that she looks as if she is dead. She never catches him at this because he never taught her all of his tricks.

The gaping hole inside of him yawns open sometimes and the only way to shut it again is to find his daughter, alive and well. She smiles at him when she catches him watching and he smiles back. The light catches her eyes and instead of lighting up, they seem to glitter with darkness. He shakes his head and calls a trick of the light but in his heart he starts to prepare himself.

  
  
  
  


Five days and five bodies and it’s just too much. Stiles is the one that comes to him because he doesn’t know who else to turn to.

Stiles who doubts himself at every turn and he comes to Chris. “It’s not Kate,” he says, his eyes wide and haunted. “It’s not Kate,” he repeats and Chris wonders if he sleeps at night or if nightmares haunt him the way that they do Chris.

“Stiles, look at me,” he orders the boy, capturing his full attention for the first time. Chris can’t help but be surprised by the depth of clarity in them, the intelligence and the pain. They are the kind of eyes that he sees every morning in his own mirror and Chris hates to see them in a teenager. “Tell me what you know.”

“It’s Allison,” he whispers, anguished. “She’s the one killing them.”

Chris does not take a step back, does not react as though he’s been slapped. Instead he sees the pattern, all of the clues that Stiles must have pieced together. Stiles has the mind of a hunter, the same way that Chris does. It is Scott and Allison’s code that hold him firmly in place, never flirting with the dark side like Chris has.

He doesn’t need to. He’s already played in the dark, in a dark much more complete than Chris has ever experienced. It’s the dark that killed his daughter and Chris doesn’t take Stiles’ words lightly. He knows what it takes the boy to say them out loud.

  
  
  


In the aftermath he holds his daughter’s body in his arms like he didn’t the first time (and he wonders what he did in some past life that was so bad that he has to watch his daughter die a second time). Allison feels so small in his arms but she smiles up at him.

“It’s better this way,” she whispers to him. “I want to follow our code.”

He watches the light go out of her eyes this time, is there for the last few beats of her heart. This time he screams in agony. He screams and screams and screams, clutching his daughter’s body to him. Then he stands and hands her to the Sheriff and to Melissa.

He stands and he walks with the pack to find Kate. Chris has no sentiment left for the one who tried to destroy everything his daughter is.

  
  
  


Scott stands next to him, head bowed as they gaze at the flowers growing around Allison’s grave. Chris has lost count of how long it has been since she was returned to the ground but he knows exactly how long it’s been since she died.

“I can feel her with me sometimes,” Scott says and Chris has to look up to meet his eyes. He’s grown in the years since Allison died. “She helps me.”

“She liked helping people.”

Neither of them say that she gave her life to help people rather than to harm them. Neither of them say that she could have been standing with them if they’d just looked the other way.

But they couldn’t have looked the other way. Allison wouldn’t have wanted them to. Together they turn and walk away, returning to the pack that waits for them.

Allison was 17 years old. She liked talking about boys and protecting others. She was brave and kind and smart. Her friends and family were her world. She never made it past 17.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my quick way of dealing with the finale and the loss of Allison without changing anything from canon. Just had to reconcile myself to her not coming back.


End file.
